LMN Architects unveil detailed concept for the Cleveland Medical Mart

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LMN Architects
An architectural rendering shows the Cleveland Medical Mart as it would appear from the center of Mall B, looking west.A

It's too soon to declare the rapidly evolving designs for the new Cleveland medical mart a success. But the latest renderings of the project, unveiled Thursday by MMPI Inc. of Chicago, are intriguing, even encouraging. Among other things, they showed for the first time that the medical mart could have facades of glass and pre-cast concrete panels arranged in lyrical geometric patterns that uncannily -- and unintentionally -- evoke similar ideas in the Op Art paintings of the internationally renowned Cleveland artist Julian Stanczak.

The spirited facades, which create a pixilated pattern inspired and made possible by computer technology, would mark the building as something special and unique in Cleveland.

Still, a great deal of work lies ahead on critical details that will determine the success of the building, which is part of a $465 million project that includes replacing the city's old convention center below the downtown Mall with a new one.

The deadline pressure to complete a design and break ground for the convention center and medical mart together before Jan. 1 is fierce.

Cuyahoga County, which has partnered with MMPI to build the new facilities, needs to take advantage of historically low interest rates, the limited availability of federal recovery bonds and the current low cost of labor and materials.

Purchase options on privately owned land vital to the project are also set to expire Dec. 31, said Jeffrey Appelbaum, the Cleveland lawyer representing the county in its deal with MMPI.

The county and MMPI made progress Thursday toward final approval from city review agencies in a joint meeting of the Cleveland City Planning Commission, Landmarks Commission and Design Review Committee.

Members of all three bodies signaled they like the general direction, but they also imposed a long to-do list regarding what they'd like to see next.

The public will get its chance to have a say at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium of the Cleveland Public Library, 325 Superior Ave., at a public forum organized by the city's new Group Plan Commission.

Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson appointed the 15-member panel, which includes civic, foundation, business and sports-team executives, to plan and raise money for enhancements to public spaces around the core project, especially the city's 12.6-acre downtown Mall.

Members of the design team for the medical mart and convention center, including LMN Architects and landscape architects from Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, both of Seattle, will be present at the library forum.

Before Thursday, public discussion about the big downtown project focused far more on the convention center and its internal functions than on the medical mart, which will be the major above-ground component of the two interconnected facilities.

Thursday's meeting showed that architects from LMN have produced a concept driven by functional logic, but which also presents strong aesthetic possibilities.

The 230,000-square-foot building, which will rise west of the downtown Mall and north of St. Clair Avenue, will include 95,000 square feet of permanent showroom space for advanced medical devices. Several existing buildings and a parking garage will be demolished to make way for it.

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LMN Architects
Window patterns along the Ontario Street faAade of the medical mart would create an abstract geometric pattern.

Inside the mart, four levels of showrooms will wrap around the south, west and north sides of a large, east-facing atrium oriented toward the Mall and Public Auditorium on the opposite side.

The Mall, conceived in 1903 by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham and colleagues on the city's original Group Plan Commission, is a grand, formal civic space whose form and spirit echo that of the Mall in Washington, D.C., also heavily influenced by Burnham.

The challenge in adding to such a large-scale urban composition is how to do something fresh and contemporary that also fits in.

LMN is clearly trying to do this. The firm's design calls for a building whose shoebox shape would fit among the early 20th-century neoclassical buildings around the Mall, including Public Auditorium, the library and the Howard Metzenbaum U.S. Courthouse.

The intention is to create something imposing and monumental, although the building could end up looking merely clunky if the architects aren't careful.

To get around this, they're exploring the idea of facades that look like a tightly stretched fabric with a pixilated pattern of concrete panels and windows intended to evoke high-tech medical imagery, such as DNA sequences.

Areas where glass predominates are intended to admit light to the med mart's showrooms. On the east facade, facing the Mall, the four-story atrium window would be framed largely by concrete panels, giving the building a more monumental look.

It's a great idea, but the design raises tricky and unresolved aesthetic issues.

One is that the architects want the building's big, blocky mass to appear to levitate over a ground-level story of glass. So far, the renderings create the impression of a large, hefty structure hovering oddly in space.

If the upper stories end up looking too weighty and massive in contrast with the one-story strip of glass along the sidewalks, the building might feel like a great, crushing object ready to smash down on anyone who enters -- not a happy thought.

The other big issue is whether the architects pursue their concept of using molded concrete blocks to create a crinkled texture to add visual interest, especially as the sun changes angles throughout the day.

From early renderings, it's unclear how well the textured panels would integrate with the lively and lyrical patterns created by the windows. The two ideas might clash, although future versions of the design could resolve the potential visual conflict.

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LMN Architects
Viewed from the southeast, along St. Clair Avenue, the medical mart would have apixilateda facades of glass and precast concrete, which would become more opaque as the wrap around the south side to the east side of the building.

The biggest single concern at Thursday's meeting had less to do with the building's appearance than whether it will pump life and activity into the downtown Mall, which doubles as the roof of the existing convention center and will perform the same function in the future.

The Mall has felt lifeless for decades, in large part because the civic buildings that flank it are oriented to face surrounding streets, not the central space.

Lillian Kuri, a member of the planning commission, said "it seems crazy" to allow the medical mart to do the same.

She wanted to see a restaurant or cafe on the ground floor, facing the Mall, plus canopies and vehicular drop-offs. In various resolutions, the design-review bodies made the same point.

Myron Maurer, a senior vice president of MMPI, said the company will take the suggestions to heart. Again, future versions of the design will show whether the medical mart can do more to bring life to the Mall.

For now, the project offers a look at architecture in the making. Each new version from LMN gets better. For Cleveland, that's the right direction.